


Pressure Drop [Ch 1]

by SuzumePaige



Series: David S. Krause, P.I. [1]
Category: Guilt Pleasure - Works
Genre: David S. Krause PI, GuiltPleasure, Left my heart in San Francisco, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 00:04:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16670950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuzumePaige/pseuds/SuzumePaige
Summary: In San Francisco for only months, David Krause has stumbled into a job as a Private Investigator. Working out of his small loft and with just the few connections that he has isn't ideal, but it pays the bills--and until now has been nothing but boring.An innocent tip from a SFPD friend leads David to a case that proves to be anything but. With a young client headed off the rails and an employer more than ready to use blackmail to get what he wants, David needs to decide whether to stick to his morals or risk not only losing his new life but the thin veneer of the things that he vowed to leave behind him.Set concurrent to the events of GuiltPleasure's best-selling manga "In These Words," Pressure Drop is a new beginning for the ex-Homicide Detective as he leaves his old life in New York and tries to reinvent himself on the golden coast.





	Pressure Drop [Ch 1]

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first chapter from the first novel of the David S. Krause PI series published by Guilt|Pleasure. (www.guiltpleasure.com) This is here as a teaser-- if you're interested in continuing, the rest can be bought on ebook at GP's website! The ebook contains chapter illustrations and a cover by the lovely Kadono Yoo.

CHAPTER ONE

Waking up with a hangover was lousy. 

I cracked an eyelid and frowned at the broad expanse of windows along the wall next to my bed. What seemed like a nice architectural detail on a good day--floor to ceiling windows, who doesn’t love them?--didn’t make me feel quite so chipper this morning, when all I wanted was for the sun to go away. Note to self: see about getting blinds. Thick ones. Even in San Francisco when the summer sun only makes an appearance while the fog burns off between the hours of eleven and three, the diffuse light of the late morning was enough to make me feel more terrible than I needed to.

I buried my face into my pillow, giving myself a minute of darkness before getting up and getting on with it. It wasn’t my first hangover and it wouldn’t be my last. Putting my feet to the floor nearly upset a mostly-empty bottle of tequila and leaning over to grab it made the blood throb in my ears. Christ. Taking a slow breath, I moved the bottle against the cardboard box left over from the move that still doubled as a nightstand and settled my forehead against my knees. Breathing at the floor didn’t make it any steadier. My fingernails scraped against my scalp and the sensation raised the hair on my arms, pulled at the small muscles behind my eyes.

Coffee. Coffee first, then shower, and I was pretty sure I’d live. I ran my tongue over my teeth with a grimace but decided that teeth-brushing could come only when I was sure that the contents of my stomach boasted more than just what was missing from the bottle at my feet. 

Standing was a small victory, and I managed to get myself into sweat pants without falling down the stairs of the loft that held the bed, a wardrobe, and little else. Despite the largeness of the downstairs area--it worked well when a guy was working and living all in the same twelve-hundred square feet--the loft area itself wasn’t much bigger than my king-sized bed and some mornings I still missed my bedroom back home. 

\--Plus I still referred to New York as home, even though my driver’s license now sported a California Brown bear in the background.

A city was a city, though, and that would always be the truth to an old Brooklyn boy like me, even with the ocean on my wrong shoulder. Outside here was still the steady hum of the city that I’d lived all my life with, a constant background, not just this morning but every morning. It hadn’t been so much different in New York, a different pitch, maybe, but the same comforting hum of life. Traffic, constant, the buzz of lights and people, the thrum of shuffled water. Live in a city long enough and it gets in the bones, which is exactly why city people go to the country and complain that the silence isn’t relaxing; it’s like denying a long-time addict their drug of choice. 

The floor in the converted warehouse of the Dogpatch--the so-named old industrial section of the the city where I’d decided to buy--was artfully unfinished, just as was most of the space. Somebody had clearly wanted to turn the old waterfront buildings into high rises, probably, before the area had refused to gentrify completely enough for Old Money sensibilities: after that, best bet was to leave the high ceilings and exposed brick and target the crunchy instead of the rich. I was only too happy to comply even though I’d never call myself crunchy; god knew a siren or three at night past my windows couldn’t bother me. Brick, concrete and wood, loft space and huge windows: what the place lacked in modern comforts, it made up for with weird minimalist appeal. The old fluorescent lighting was the only thing that I truly hated. The buzzing, christ. It was awful. I’d retaliated by buying a whole lot of lamps in my first week here. 

The coffee pot was half full from another morning and I didn’t bother making another, just checked to make sure the grounds weren’t moldy before pulling a mug down from the open shelving that lined the walls above the counters. The coffee looked like black sludge and didn’t taste any better, and I took a second drink to follow the first. 

Funny how _that_ reminded me of New York, especially bad nights at the precinct. 

Frowning into the opaque depths I moved back under the loft, where I had my work set up. Nothing fancy, but the desk and necessities had their own space and that was the point. Taking another sip, I slid a photo out from under a magnet on the standing white-board I’d taken with me from the old district and crumpled it one-handed, tossing it toward the trash and missing by at least two feet. 

A small light on my cell phone blinked from the desk, reminding me that life still beckoned beyond the morning fog and the pain behind my eyes. Grabbing the phone, I walked it over to the blue subway tile of the counter, hit play and speaker, and set it down to listen while seeing what I could do about making myself feel a little more human.

“You have two new messages.”

Maybe I could eat something after all. I pulled open the fridge. By gourmet standards it was a sad sight that peered back at me but I wasn’t a picky eater, so long as I had the right cut of meat. Finding a good butcher was worth all the high-scale ingredients in the world.

“First new message.”

I grabbed a paper-wrapped package and tossed it on the counter, along with a lone tomato languishing near the back of the crisper. “Hey, David.” It was Lina Xu, a friend of mine at the SFPD. One of the eggs came with me as I closed the fridge and pulled a pan off the wire rack that hung over the island. The stove and all the appliances were ridiculously new--a selling point to apologize for the lack of window shades, I guessed--and happily gas. I turned a burner on and it leapt into blue flame.

“...need someone to do a background check. Probably bore you to death, but they’ll pay out the nose.” I’d known Lina for a few years; she’d moonlit on Beat at my old sister precinct while her boyfriend found his calling under the New York night-lights. Needless to say she’d only hung around for about a year before heading home. We’d gotten to be friends in that year, though, and stayed in touch, trading war stories over beers whenever we happen to be in the same town. When I’d moved and ended up a bus line away from the place she’d grown up, she’d loved getting me back for all the times I’d called her a liberal hippy.

Since failing to convince me to rejoin the force on the west coast, Lina had been sending me odds and ends that the police wouldn’t--or couldn’t--touch themselves. Maybe she felt protective of me, once she’d heard about everything that had happened back in New York, I don’t know. I didn’t look too far into it. There were a lot of things I’d tucked into a little box in my head and pushed it far to the back in order to get on with my life. I might not want to be a cop again, but I hadn’t lost the skills inherent to the position. But what did a career cop do when he didn’t have the career anymore? Within two months in San Francisco and the odds and ends Lina passed me, along with a few favors done for other associates, I’d somehow become David S. Krause, PI.

It was working out. I hadn’t planned it, but it was working. 

The butter sizzled in the pan. Despite my headache, my stomach growled. “I gave your number to their chief of SecOps, Paul Gregory.” I unwrapped the sausage from the butcher paper, butterflying it neatly and sliding it onto the heat. Stepping closer to the phone to hear over the cooking meat, I turned up the volume as high as it would go with a knuckle. “I’ve known Gregory for a few years,” Lina was saying, “he’s a cool fish, but an honest guy and a good man to have your back; plus the hedgefund has a decent reputation around the city. They donate well to the area.” Which meant nothing, and Lina knew it. Still, I supposed, even if showing good face meant the job would be run of the mill, it wouldn’t put any less food on the table.

“Come around for lunch sometime. Talk to you later, bye.”

Any suspense I had regarding the job was ultimately short-lived; the next message was from Mr. Gregory himself. I poured maple syrup into the pan and flipped the meat. Paul Gregory’s voice was hard, his consonants clipped by almost nasal stops. I pulled a plate off the drying rack.

“Hello, Mr. Krause. My name is Paul Gregory; I am the Chief Security Officer at BonTemps, LLC. You were recommended to my firm by Officer Lina Xu, who has assured me of both your professionalism and discretion. Please return my call as promptly as possible so that we can arrange a meeting in person to discuss the details of the job.” And that was all. Paul Gregory said his number before ringing off, with direct extension; he either didn’t have a secretary, which I doubted, or didn’t want her involved, which was definitely more interesting. Sausage off the pan, tomato halved and in. It made me curious, I admit it. The man wanted an in-person interview to discuss details of a background check? Then fine, I’d take myself in. 

The hard sell about being a private dick was that it wasn’t like the movies at all. In real life Sam Spade didn’t exist, unless he was somewhere buried under a mountain of boring surveillance hours and bullshit sexual harassment charges called in by nervous employers--just the kind of things that I’d spent the last half a year doing myself. Husbands jealous of wives having more fun and idiots trying to dodge summons.

The egg sizzled and crackled as it hit the hot pan; I gave it a moment and then turned off the heat, flipping it and sliding the whole thing over the sausage on my plate. Hands braced on the counter, staring down at breakfast, I decided that maybe I didn’t want to eat after all--and my stomach gave a faint menacing burble of agreement. The coffee hadn’t gotten any tastier and I grimaced with my swallow as I grabbed the full plate and headed back upstairs.

“Hey.”

Setting the food on the one real nightstand I possessed, I pulled back the heaped comforter and proffered the cold coffee at the blinking, naked tumble of limbs in the bed. “Tyler.”

“Taylor,” the tumble of limbs frogged out through a fog of sleep, fumbling to sit upright and smile as he took the coffee. A long slug later had him scowling. “This is cold.”

“The food’s not. It’s yours.”

Tyler/Taylor pushed up from an elbow to a hand in order to look at the plate, the food still drawing small cues of steam in the murky early morning light, and made the quick--and smart--decision to abandon the coffee. He sat up against rucked white pillows and brick wall and settled the food into his lap. I was happy enough to be ignored for the moment, left alone to my headache and my vague tickle of curiosity over the new potential client. I didn’t often let guests sleep over; the quieter he was, the more inclined I was not to trundle him out the door with his underwear in his hand. 

The shower was downstairs, tucked behind the staircase in a space that gave new meaning to the term water closet, but the water got hot within seconds and that was the only thing I gave a shit about--especially this morning. I turned the shower nearly to scalding and let my breathing slow to accommodate the steam that slowly trapped in the small space. It was like swimming without moving. I left my sweats on the cement floor with its small grade toward a center drain that, in darker moods, reminded me disconcertingly of prisions. I turned my face up into the burn and wondered if I could sear away the headache that persisted just behind my eyes. “Tyler.”

“Now you’re just being rude.” 

I hadn’t needed to hear him; I could feel the change in temperature from the opening of the shower door. From behind me came his hands, tracing over the curve of my hips before beginning to--I can only imagine considering how slow his pace--try to memorize the lines of my flaccid cock. I shivered despite the heat, as if his fingertips were crawling up my spine instead of somewhere far more intimate. 

“Thank you for breakfast.” 

The grip on my cock tightened and I closed my eyes; the skin was dragged up and back around the firming core. 

One of my hands reached out to steady myself against the cold tile, the honest truth being that I didn’t know how long I would be able to stand up through suspended arousal. My leg muscles were already in a bit of disrepair from a night spent both in a bottle of tequila and a kid half my age, the latter who was now fisting my cock with a finesse I found moderately alarming. He made a particular little motion and a groan edged up my throat while my balls drew up--all in sweet little concert to a new, ragged thump in my pulse. 

I swallowed any protests I might have considered and melted against the cold tile right up until his free hand filled itself with a handful of my ass, his thumb edging toward my anus. Reaching back, I closed fingers around his wrist.

The smile in his voice was obvious as he purred the words against my shoulder. “I like your ass.”

“I’m flattered.” I teethed water from my lips and pulled his hand free of its grip. He snorted, the sound containing just enough humor not to be condescending. It was a close thing, though, and didn’t help make me more sympathetic. 

“Guess it’s true,” he said, voice a sigh, “you just can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

The end of his sentence softened into a gasp as I twisted my grip and his wrist along with it, forcing him to follow the motion I set or dislocate his elbow. Not that my age was a sensitive subject--I just thought that if people lacked basic respect, then they should have it taught to them; generally in a lesson that would stick.

Tyler/Taylor wisely followed my lead and ended up on his knees in front of me, neatly between my legs. “This old dog knows plenty of tricks already,” I said. I tightened my grip fractionally on his wrist, feeling the small bones there. His eyes narrowed but then his face relaxed, his mouth losing its pained sneer and a grudging humor sparking in hazel eyes. I took the moment to look him over. Water dripped from my nose onto his chin, and chest. His hair was pale; certainly not natural, but I didn’t need natural. We’d had a good night. He passed a tongue over straight teeth and smiled.

“Let go and I’ll show you something nice.”

I’d sooner let go of a wild animal. We’d had a good night, but that didn’t mean I didn’t understand how it felt to be stupid with youth and confidence. Locked too many of those sort up in my life.

“No.” The word felt like gravel in my throat and I saw the way his body stilled as I spoke. “You don’t need your hands to show me something nice.” He laughed, very quietly, and raised his free hand up to me. An offering. I approved of that, at least. He’d slept in my bed, ate my food--if he wanted to give me a blowjob I wouldn’t say no, but my charity for the attitude that apparently came with his parted lips was running low. I gathered his second wrist up with the first in one hand.

Taylor/Tyler didn’t have much hair, only that cropped bleach job that felt like fine-grade sandpaper against my skin. I slid my free hand over his scalp, my palm cupping the contours of his skull. There was little resistance when I moved him forward, though at first he didn’t open his mouth, only let me smear my wet erection across his lips and cheeks. Water parted dark eyelashes into thick-clumped fans--I didn’t need the carpet to tell that the drapes didn’t match. 

He swallowed me in one slick slurp, all the way down until his nose was pressed into my pubic hair and his throat fluttered with the struggle not to gag. It was good. I held his head there, fingers pressing a tattoo against the back ridge of his skull, and flexed my hips forward once, lazy, before letting go. He coughed but didn’t pull away completely, adding a flood of warm spittle to the wetness of his mouth. I could hear the obscene sound of it just under the spray of the shower.

Holding his wrists only reflexively, I put my other arm up, forearm against the tile, and rested my forehead down again with my eyes closed. His mouth evened out around my cock, rhythm taking the place of theatrics. He slurped me down, sucked almost off, repeated himself.

My balls drew up as he worked and I lost the bigger sensations; with my eyes closed, everything was warmth and tightness. My breath sped up and then stuck in my throat, along with my pulse.

I didn’t bother to hold back, or warn him when my orgasm came. Still, he swallowed everything--as much as I cared to notice; I was already ready for him to leave. “You can let yourself out,” I said, my breath only catching a little. I let go of his wrists. It wasn’t polite, but the orgasm had made my headache worse.

He snorted and I felt, more than saw, him turn on his knees and stand. The shower curtain rustled and the chillier air of the room pushed away the steam of the shower. “You’re pretty trusting,” he said, more than loudly enough for me to hear.

I smiled into the darkness behind my closed eyes. “I don’t trust you in the slightest,” I said, clearing up the thoughts I doubted he was entertaining anyway. “I used to be a cop; I own a gun, and I looked at the address on your license while you were sleeping last night.”

His laugh was loud. “Christ, you’re a piece of work, Dave. Stay sweet.”

Thank God he wasn’t making a stink about leaving. “Tyler?”

“Hm?”

“There’s advil on the sink. Grab me two.”

Honestly, I didn’t expect him to help me at all, breakfast or no breakfast. But when I cracked my eye open into the ensuing silence, I found an offered hand with two small, dark red pills in the palm. And at that, I managed a smile. 

His returned expression almost made me like him.

“Thanks.”

Taylor gave me a wink and turned, shutting the door closed. I dry swallowed the pills and turned my face up into the spray. It was only later after I’d finished dressing that I realized he’d taken the rest of the tequila.

\+ + +

BonTemps, LLC was two floors of a highrise in the Financial District. Everyone I passed on the sidewalks had somewhere to be yesterday, and they all had black jackets and nicely shined shoes. The financiers of San Francisco certainly had no lack of superficial confidence; they were shiny people, and enjoyed projecting that shine.

My soon-to-be-employer was little different.

Paul Gregory had a coveted corner office, all windows and teak furniture. It was trying to be very impressive; I wasn’t impressed. I’d dealt with people who had money before--and they all shit with their pants down just like the rest of us. Needless to say, I had still made an effort to look presentable enough; I hadn’t bothered with a suit jacket in some time.

Gregory was not exactly what I had expected, having heard his voice. Sitting behind his large desk when I entered the room, he was balding but youthful, with a beak of a nose and wide, full lips. His suit was expensive. I didn’t like him before he’d even opened his mouth.

“I’m glad you stopped by, Mr. Krause--even on such short notice. Please, have a seat.” He didn’t shake my hand, only extended his arm as he stood in order to gesture me toward the low, sleek leather couches that stood on the other side of the office. Following me over, he smoothed his tie down as he sat, slinging an arm across the back of the cushion that lay between us. 

“David is fine.”

I almost didn’t extend the courtesy of informality, but decided that Gregory probably would take it on his own and I didn’t like the thought of the liberty being his; maybe it was petty of me. I didn’t care.

“David, then. The reason for my discretion is simple.” His fingers shifted too near my shoulder, restless. It seemed that this was actually important to him. “We are a company with many specific, careful investments, you see, and our newest potential investor is… young. There have been rumors and we need to make sure that his dalliances don’t extend beyond the pale.”

I could feel my eyebrows drawing together and I forced them to relax. “You’re not vetting me before telling me this?” Strange enough that the information would be sensitive enough as to require an in-meeting, stranger still that I seemed to already be in the man’s circle of trust. I’d never considered myself paranoid, but after more than a decade of being a detective, I was still alive and in good health. Spend long enough in the field and a man learned to trust the red flags raised by his gut, out of practice or not. The feeling never went away.

Gregory smiled. “You came well recommended, David.” 

I already regretted telling him to call me that. “By Officer Xu. I’d think--”

“By others as well.” His smile spread without reaching up toward his eyes. “I’m good at my job, and a better judge of character. You haven’t been in this city long but your body of work already speaks for itself.”

Under my shirt, the hairs on my arms were standing up. The man might as well have had stuffed animal heads decorating the walls; I knew a hunter when I saw one. 

Shit.

I was jumpy. Smoothing a hand over my mouth I made myself smile, feeling my lips spread over my teeth one by one. The hangover had not been a good way to start the day; I should have left this meeting until tomorrow. Regardless, I was here. I had to pull it together.

My own tie was smoothed under a palm; it was deliberately mirroring Gregory’s earlier gesture. I sat up straighter, determined to get my head into the game. Paul Gregory and I might never meet again, my feelings for him weren’t important. At the bottom of all the supposed discretion, this was a background check, a job. And a job that I needed.

“Usually people provide their own references.” I couldn’t help taking that small bite, however, before continuing, and was gratified to see the corner of Gregory’s mouth pinch. He wasn’t used to being called out or challenged. It made me feel a little bit better. “But either way, I’m here and you’re happy, so. This potential investor?”

Gregory cleared his throat and nodded. He pushed himself to his feet, moving back to his desk to pull a file from a standing rack that sat on the corner. He passed it to me and before turning to the small side table against the wall. “Thomas Petrovich.”

The name was listed on the tab of the folder, neat black Courier letters on the white label. I opened the file while Gregory poured two drinks without asking, even though it was barely three. Spread open on my knees was a sleek stack of information that looked disconcertingly like a police rap sheet, if only in presentation. Clipped atop the papers was a photocopied picture of what I assumed was Petrovich’s passport photo.

Thomas Petrovich was a disturbing sort of handsome. His jaw was too angular, his eyes slanted cat-like over high cheekbones. Combined with a wide forehead and rakish hair, he should have looked odd but the effect taken together was instead striking and quite brutal--he was beautiful in the way a deadly weapon was beautiful. The date of birth put him at twenty-four years of age.

Only twenty-four.

Okay. I was curious.

I flipped through the pages. Even a cursory glance was enough; the young man was smart, he had graduated quickly, with honors, and turned a tidy sum of old family money into--

“Christ,” I said, shocked into the admission by the number on the paper under my thumb. Gregory snorted and handed me a drink. I took it, because I needed it, and downed a quarter of the liquid before I even realized what it was. Bourbon. I swallowed the edge of sweet burn in my throat and then set the glass on the coffee table with a small nod of thanks. “This is for real?”

The man inclined his head. “BonTemps doesn’t accept investors whose net worth is less than twenty million, but even by our standards, Petrovich is rare.” He sipped his own drink and remained standing, eyes on the file in my lap. “To be so young and worth so much--you can understand the potential for having such a client. We want him very badly to be part of our portfolio.”

“But?” There had to be a but, or else I wouldn’t be here. There had to be a big but, or Petrovich would have been taken on board the moment that he’d walked through the front door with his bank statement in hand.

“But there have been rumors, as I said. My own professional background check has turned up nothing amiss, but nothing either to dispel these certain worries. Personally delving into this matter would be a risk to my own reputation considering my position within this company--which is why I’m hiring outside to take care of it. Please believe me when I say that if I could handle this myself, I certainly would have. I have tried what I could.”

I looked at the bourbon and left it alone, an echo of the morning’s headache in my slow pulse, and set the file down next to it, still open to that strange angel face. What could he possibly be into that was so bad that the extremely rich wouldn’t touch him? “I can’t believe you’d turn down that kind of money, high-profile company or not. I assume that this is one hell of a rumor to have you guys running scared.”

“The rumor is that he deals with the Wah Ching gang.”

My first instinct was to laugh, but it was suppressed. I bit the inside of my lip. “Dub C?” I knew just enough about the local gangs that I could steer clear of them. “Petrovich is rich and white and Russian. What would the Wah Ching want with him?”

“Petrovich is Russian in name only; he himself is as American as they come. As apple pie, you might say.” Gregory sat again, resting his glass on his knee. He’d poured both drinks neat so there was no worry about wetting the expensive fabric with condensation from ice. “You haven’t been here long, David, so let me explain things to you. Gangs go after weak people with money, and Petrovich has that, in spades. That worries me enough since we want to invest in him and his future. But what worries me the most is the connection to the Triad.”

I spread my hands. “So you’re worried he gambles? Does drugs? I’ve never heard of a hedgefund who didn’t help their clientele find a few grams for a party.” My voice was flat. It wasn’t that I didn’t want the job, or was worried about getting involved with something that might be connected to the Triad. I was only ready to call Gregory a liar if he was going to tell me that his company’s shit didn’t stink. Big business was something else as American as apple pie and while I had to live with the culture of it, I didn’t have to be complicit. I probably couldn’t afford to be picky, but I would be, because.

The sound that Gregory made was derisive. He sat back, shaking his head.

“Oh no, David. I’d buy him blow myself if he asked for it. Hell.” He smiled, a thin thing. “I’d even roll up the hundred dollar bill and hold it to his nose. It isn’t cocaine.” He spread one hand. “In San Francisco, the Wah Ching don’t just deal in drugs.”

I swallowed a sigh. “I was a Homicide Detective in Manhattan and I know--”

“You don’t.” Gregory shook his head, and the gravity in his eyes made my skin crawl. “David, the Wah Ching deal in humans.”


End file.
